Russian Communists want to make Lenin hip again—using the power of selfies. Images mixed by Tetyana Lokot.

The art of the selfie photo has become a controversial pastime in Russia, especially after being branded “dangerous” by police, who have called for taking fewer risks and advocated for “safe selfies” with a special campaign. But Russians love their selfies and they keep taking them.

Now Russian Communists are getting in on the action and proposing to hold a federal “Selfie With Lenin” flashmob—a move they say would be a “cheap and effective way to popularize the image of the leader of the world's proletariat among the youth.” In an appeal to Gennady Zyuganov, head of the Russian Communist Party, the Lenin Communist youth union of Russia's Komi republic also stressed the flashmob would help take stock of all the Lenin statues scattered throughout the country. The Komi activists have already tested the idea on a regional level in April 2015.

The idea has merit, especially since it would allow us to see what the state of the Lenin monuments is like. We'll definitely support it. I think Vladimir Ilyich [Lenin] will be thankful.

Reacting to the news of the proposed campaign, Nikita Petrov of Memorial, a Russian non-profit historical and civil rights society, called it “domesticating the tyrant” and “an attempt to slide Lenin into the mainstream,” and said it was a desperate move that wouldn't do much for the “Communist regime.”

Lenin selfies are quite a common occurrence on the RuNet already, although most of the photos seem to be taken ironically rather than in honest adoration of Lenin's figure. In June, Russian media reported on a hilarious incident in the town of Prokopyevsk in Kemerovo region, where a drunk resident broke apart a statue of Lenin while trying to pose for a selfie with it.

TJournal trawled Russians’ selfie photos on Instagram and found quite an impressive sampling of selfies with various Lenin statues around the country, usually with the hashtag #селфислениным (#selfiewithlenin).

The RuNet, as it is wont to do, took the joke and ran with it. Users immediately suggested that a selfie campaign was just the first step, and that other possible uses for Lenin and his famous image could include renting him out for parties and weddings, and using the “brand” to further Russia's image abroad (not that it isn't already).

Other commenters pointed out that the campaign was ridiculous and wondered if it was possible to collect all symbols of communism into an amusement park of sorts, in order to remove the offending statues and street signs from everyday life.

Russia currently boasts over 6 thousand Lenin monuments around the country, and other post-Soviet states have their share as well. Notably, Ukraine has seen a number of Lenin statues toppled during the Euromaidan protests and later during the armed conflict with Russian proxies in eastern Ukraine, a phenomenon dubbed Ленинопад (Leninfall). Russia has also seen some toppling attempts: a Lenin statue at St. Petersburg's Finlyandsky train station was left with a large hole through its lower back as the result of an explosion on April Fool's Day in 2009.

Cyber attack. – Image from Flickr by Florian F. Used under a CC license BY-NC-ND 2.0

There are over 100 million Facebookers in India, leaving the country second only to the U.S. in overall users, and poised to lead the pack of countries using the social network by 2017. Yet Facebook is struggling to keep pace with the complexities presented by the vast, multilingual and culturally diverse Indian market.

Recent incidents occurring on the social media platform within the space of a few days show how Facebook is losing the war against rampant misogyny, child abuse, nude content and even the recent ‘original name’ policy the social network proudly enforces globally.

Preetha G Nair – Victim of Cyber Attack (Screen Shot)

Siding with the misogynists?

Preetha G Nair, a social media activist, has been the subject of a massive cyber-bullying campaign.

On July 19, 2015, Preetha wrote a post complaining about a misogynist remark made by G. Sudhakaran, a member of a political party in Kerala, India. In response, many of Sudhakaran's party followers reported Preetha's Facebook page as fake amid a bombardment of personal attacks on her led by Davis Thekkekara, Sudhakaran's political ally.

Preetha's account was duly suspended by Facebook, who cited ‘community standards’, only reinstating the account upon verifying that she was in fact not in the wrong. When on returning to the social network she spoke out against the politics of Dr. APJ Abdul Kalam, India's 11th president, who died on July 27, 2015, Preetha was once more singled out as a woman and subjected to a massive online attack.

A new Facebook profile subsequently appeared depicting her as a prostitute and featuring images of her friends and children as well as nasty stories with explicit sexual content. Many fellow Facebook users reported the profile and filed written email complaints with the Kerala Cyber Cell, the official website of the Kerala police.

But the Kerala police have not responded, while those reporting the issue to Facebook receive a standard message that the pages do not violate Facebook community standards. As of August 2, the fake profile was still online and active.

In support of capital punishment?

Elsewhere on Facebook, people were protesting the July 30 hanging of convicted terrorist Yakub Menon, whose capital punishment one prominent Indian journalist wrote “exposed [Indians] hunger for the macabre”.

On July 31, anti-hanging pages, also in the Malaylam language were taken down by Facebook immediately and users associated with the pages had their accounts frozen.

Anivar Aravind, an internet freedom activist, began a Twitter campaign against Facebook's policies using the hashtag #‎FoE‬. After a few hours, the frozen accounts were reinstated.

This clearly shows that Facebook Community standards are driven by people who support Capital Punishment and through them Facebook is only supporting right wingers who have no value for human rights or freedom of expression.

Whose Facebook is this?

Any person who knows how to read in the Malayalam language can understand that Preetha G Nair is being subjected to massive online abuse.

Simultaneously a simple protest against the decision of the Indian government to hang a convicted terrorist was taken as a violation of Facebook's “community standards”. This poses a question: who is monitoring Indian Facebook pages?

For women, who constitute a majority of Facebook users in India, this question is particularly important. The platform has undoubtedly helped them voice their opinions on public issues in a way that society sometimes does not allow. But that progress is being rolled back by vicious online attacks Facebook seems unable or unwilling to police. Facebook is an increasingly unsafe place for Indian women.

Screen Shot of Cyber Attack referencing Preetha's child and picture of the child

This speaks volumes about Facebook's community standards (whatever that means). Harassing a woman using derogatory language and using her pictures doesn't violate any of Facebook's policies or standards. Posting a woman's pictures on a public page without her consent and using abusive language seems acceptable to Facebook.

Preetha is my friend. The attackers who are Malayalee men are threatening that they are going to post nude pictures and videos of Preetha […] The videos and pictures of Preetha will carry my face too. I am also receiving all the insults and abuse Preetha is being subjected to. Whatever happens to someone of my gender (woman) is happening to me also.

Not that I'm surprised, but I'm fuming with anger. What the fuck are these community standards if they cannot take down a page that's nothing but purely abusive in nature and totally harassing a woman using her photos and other personal details? Facebook should review its community standards before it reviews other pages.

Whoever has complained to the police will have to suffer the consequences.

Screen Shot of Cyber attack challenging Kerala Police to find them.

But amid the online violence and Facebook's inaction, a hopeful culture of solidarity is growing. Preetha's friends are posting messages of support and defiance under the hashtag #‎പ്രീതക്കൊപ്പം‬, or #‎standingwithpreetha.

This July 30, Twitter users from the Indian state of Odisha launched a campaign to dedicate an entire day to their state delicacy, a dessert known as Rasagola. (popularly known as “Rasgulla” in India) Calling it “Rasagola Dibasa” (meaning Rasagola Day in Odia-language), Internet users spread the hashtag #RasagolaDibasa, which trended across India for several hours, and celebrated offline in Odisha with support from both the government and private organizations.

Three months back, the Odisha government proposed a “geographical indication” for the dessert, which would establish as a historical fact that Rasagola originated in the area, securing Odisha's “bragging rights” on the dish.

Contrary to some claims that Rasagola is a Bengali dessert, Odisha says it hails from the Jagannatha temple in its region. According to local myth, on July 30, the deities of Jagannatha, Balabhadra, Subhadra, and Sudarshana return to the temple (known as “Niladribije“) after their annual trip to their aunt's house during the grand procession of Ratha Jatra. According to custom, temple-goers present offerings of Rasagola, in order to subdue the gods. This custom is called “Bachanika,” and marks the beginning of Rasagola Day.

In Bengal, where there are also popular claims of having invented the dessert, people have reacted with both support for and opposition to Odisha's Rasagola Day.

“This seemed particularly cruel of our next-door neighbours, who are well aware Bengal loves its icons. We are down to just three authentic pieces: The venerable Tagore, the alarmingly-thin haired Sourav Ganguly and the “sickly sweet” rosogolla. Take away the myth of Subhas Bose being alive at 118 but spare our taste buds.”
— Dhrubo Jyoti, blog on Hindustan Times

India's national media has also taken notice of the celebration. Outlets including Zee, Hindustan Times, and India Today—not to mention many blogs—have published information and opinion about the event. India's two notable chef-celebrities, Sanjeev Kapoor and Pankaj Bhadouria, have also promoted the day on social media.

On her Facebook page, chef Pankaj Bhadouria wrote, “Did you know that 30th July is now being celebrated as Rasogola Diwas! Rasogolla is offered as Prasad at Jagannath Temple Puri and especially to Goddess Laxmi a day after the Rath Yatra ! Me? I am happy eating them everyday!! ‪#‎RasagolaDibasa.”

[..] Niladri Bije is an important day of celebration – the last day of the Rath Yatra marks the entry of the Gods to the Temple after their trip. [..] We are celebrating this day as Rasagola Dibasa- a day dedicated to Rasagolas. In Odia language, Dibasa means day. #RasagolaDibasa means Rasagola Day.

Despite the dispute about the dish's origins, Last week's celebration happily avoided any major mixups between Odisha and Bengal. The nationwide Rasagola phenomenon has also helped promote lesser-known spots in Odisha, like Pahala, which could become important in the region's geographical indication. In the long run, more national and even global attention could bring Odisha's cultural heritage to a much larger audience, helping people inside and beyond the region learn more about its important history.

An online poster against the police claim of “assault by a woman protester's breast”. From Facebook user orin.

Outraged by the three-and-a-half month jail sentence given to a woman convicted of assaulting the police with her breasts, more than a dozen organisations have mobilized a “breast walk” that will take place in Hong Kong on August 2.

Ng Lai-ying, 30, was convicted of assaulting police during an anti-parallel trader protest in March 2015 on the grounds that she had used her breast to “attack” the police officer. The incident occurred when the police officer grasped Ng's bag during the protest and she instinctively shouted “indecent assault”, as the police officer's arm brushed her breast. The charge filed against Ng Lai-ying inverted the accusation, depicting Ng as the aggressive party.

Several other protestors were also convicted of assaulting police on the same occasion.

Despite the fact the police officer did not suffer any injuries from the “breast assault” — while Ng's face was covered with blood when she was arrested — the magistrate indicated that Ng had precipitated chaos and violence against police by shouting “indecent assault” and sentenced her to three-and-a-half months in prison on July 30. Ng is currently out on bail pending appeal.

In response to the ridiculous ruling, a dozen civic groups created the “breast walk” protest. Event organizers urged participants to wear their bra on the outside of their clothes to deliver the message that “breasts are not weapons”.

We found this ridiculous as Ms Ng was originally making a complaint about suspected sexual assault of a police officer in the protest but now she has been turned into an attacker. We also feel angry about the fact that the case has made weapons of women's breasts and seems to be saying women are wrong to shout for help when faced with an attack.

One of the rally organisers Luk Kit Ling told independent news portal inmediahk.net that the groups would rally at the police headquarters to protest against the police officer's claim he was assaulted by Ng's breast:

陸潔玲稱到警總是要抗議作供的警員竟稱女性胸部襲擊，認為警員與普通市民權力不平等，日後警員將無須再在性騷擾及性別問題上有任何顧忌。

Luk Kit LIng explained that the rally at the police headquarters was to protest against the police officer's testimony that he was assaulted by a woman's breast. Given that police officers [are given authority as law enforcers] they are more powerful than ordinary citizens, this case would [lead to further abuse of power] to the extent that they could neglect complaints about sexual harassment [when police are in uniform].

Gloria Yip, a local artist, initiated a online poster action: Breasts are not weapons.

Performance artist Gloria Yip initiated an online poster action to protest against labelling a woman's breast as a weapon.

Leading digital rights advocates and bloggers Markus Beckedahl and Andre Meister, along with an “unknown party,” are being investigated for treason for allegedly having leaked documents detailing Germany's plans to expand domestic Internet surveillance earlier this year.

The bloggers received an official letter from Germany's Federal Attorney General informing them that he had “initiated a criminal investigation on suspicion of treason against [the accused] on the basis of §§ 94 Abs. 1 Nr. 2, 25 Abs. 2, 53 German Criminal Code, due to criminal charges by the Federal Office for Protection of the Constitution.”

Netzpolitik.org is a critical german investigative blog with more than 30 authors who report mainly on issues concerning Internet surveillance and privacy since 2004. The website was awarded with the well-known Grimme Online Award in 2014. Beckedahl is also a founding director of the popular annual Re:Publica conference in Berlin, which focuses on digital rights and culture.

Today, we received a letter from the Federal Attorney General of Germany confirming ongoing investigations against our reporters Markus Beckedahl, Andre Meister and an “unknown” source, suspecting us of treason according to the German Penal Code.

In their statement, netzpolitik.org condemned the investigations as an attack on press freedom:

From the very beginning, the charges against our alleged source(s) were politically motivated and targeted to crush the necessary public debate about internet surveillance Post-Snowden. Whistleblowers in the public interest need protection, not prosecution for “treason”. Investigating the acclaimed media outlet netzpolitik.org as accomplices in treason charges is a direct attack on freedom of the press, which we thought was outlawed with the Constitutional Court ruling in the Cicero case 2007.

The netzpolitik.org bloggers have stated clearly that they will not be intimidated by the investigations and that their independent and critical journalism will continue:

The Federal Attorney General needs to drop the investigations against us and our alleged source(s) and instead investigate and charge the out-of-control secret services that are expanding their mass surveillance without public debate.

The investigation of netzpolitik.org has led to an uproar in mainstream and social media. #Landesverrat (#treason) immediately trended in Germany with many users expressing concern about the investigations.

The investigation was also sharply criticized by the German Press Association. Michael Konken, Chairman of the German Journalists Association stated: “The investigations against the two journalists show, that the head of the Office for the Protection of the Constitution has not learnt anything concerning freedom of speech,” arguing that bloggers had simply delivered the information that is in the public interest and that the public is entitled to know. He has urged the Federal Attorney General to stop the investigation immediately.

The Kremlin is officially cracking down on online anonymity. Images mixed by Tetyana Lokot.

Russia is now officially cracking down on anonymizing web services—tools that allow users to access content and websites that might be banned in the country. Roscomnadzor, Russia's Internet censor, has added the anonymizing service NoBlock to its blacklist registry.

The block came after a court in Anapa decreed the service could be used to access content that had earlier been added to the extremist materials list. The court decree from 13 April, 2015, says NoBlock would allow Internet users “to have full access to all banned websites through anonymous browsing and user IP masking.”

The same court in Anapa was quite busy in April, and banned twoother anonymizers, with the respective decrees essentially carbon copies of the one above, but those websites have not yet been added to the Roscomnadzor-managed blocked websites registry. Several other Russian courts, including some in Bashkortostan and Dagestan, have also ruled to block anonymizers, but the court decrees do not reveal the specific addresses of the banned websites.

In May, RosKomSvoboda, a Russian Internet freedom and human rights organization, reported that the very same Anapa city court also ruled to block part of their website on the grounds that the page in question was an anonymizer. In fact, the section of the website owned by RosKomSvoboda only provided instructions on how to bypass geoblocking and access websites blacklisted in Russia.

It's worth noting that in almost all of the rulings, the court cited existing legislation not specific to Internet anonymization services, such as the law on extremism. Still, the fact that the court specified the term “anonymizer” as one of the premises for blocking the websites is cause for concern, since anonymizers, proxy-servers, and other similar tools are not explicitly prohibited in Russia.

Russian officials have debated restrictions on VPNs and anonymizers for quite a while. In 2013 Russian media reported that the Federal Security Service (FSB) was considering lobbying the State Duma with a bill banning “Tor and other anonymizing proxy servers,” but the idea never got out of committee. In February 2015, Leonid Levin, an MP heading the parliamentary committee on information policy and communications, suggested that access to anonymization and circumvention tools such as Tor, VPNs, and proxy-servers needed to be restricted.

In 2014, the Russian Interior Ministry offered almost 4 million rubles (about USD $100,000) to anyone who could devise a way to decrypt data sent over the Tor network. Most recently, in July, Russian media reported that the Kremlin commissioned a study of “possibilities of influencing the development of the Russian segment of the Internet,” that included looking into methods of preventing anonymous activity online and developing ways of regulating and filtering information posted anonymously, analyzing encryption methods, and monitoring encrypted online traffic.

RuNet Echo's own analysis shows that Tor use has been on the uptick in Russia, ostensibly in response to the Kremlin's efforts to regulate or censor content online. Though a recent report by the UN Special Rapporteur on the Promotion and Protection of the Right to Freedom of Opinion and Expression recognizes encryption software and anonymizing tools as “essential to free speech,” the Kremlin seems to be eager to curtail the use of the software that facilitates anonymity and free expression online.

Access to the visual history of most former colonial countries in Africa is usually a challenging proposition because former colonial powers restrict access to historical archives. Helihanta RAJAONARISON and Tsiry Fy-Tia SOLOFOMIHANTA in Madagascar sought to solve this issue and make the history of Madagascar more palatable to the general public by creating an online Museum of Madagascar through a collection of vintage photographs.

The website went live on July 27, 2015, and offers a glimpse of everyday lives in Madagascar from 1850 to 1960. The collections is organized in four major periods: Pre-colonial Period, Colonial Period, Major Constructions, Everyday Life and Independence.

“You still have time!” Illustration by Carlos Latuff. Used with permission

Calls from supporters of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions Movement (BDS) against Israel have not swayed Brazilian music stars Gilberto Gil and Caetano Veloso, who plan to go ahead with a concert scheduled for next week in Tel Aviv.

For months, artists and activists around the world, including former apartheid campaigner and Nobel Prize winner Desmond Tutu, asked the duo — who in 1960s defied the military regime as part of the artistic movement Tropicália — to take part in BDS and cancel the July 28 performance.

Ex-Pink Floyd member Roger Waters, a long-time activist of the Palestinian cause, wrote two public letters in which he implored Veloso to cancel the show. In the first, addressed in late May, he said:

As you know, international artists concerned about human rights in apartheid South Africa refused to cross the picket line to play Sun City. In those days, Little Steven, Bruce Springsteen and 50 or so other musicians protested against the vicious, racist oppression of the indigenous peoples of South Africa. Those artists helped win that battle, and we, in the nonviolent Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement for Palestinian freedom, justice and equality, will win this one against the similarly racist and colonialist policies of the Israeli government of occupation. We will continue to press forward in favor of equal rights for all the peoples of the Holy Land. Just as musicians weren’t going to play Sun City, increasingly we’re not going to play Tel Aviv. There is no place today in this world for another racist, apartheid regime.

In his own letter, Tutu emphasized the conditions in which Palestinians are forced to live:

I have myself witnessed the apartheid reality that Israel has created within its borders and in the occupied Palestinian territory. … If we cannot, at the very least, heed the appeals of Palestinian society, to refrain from undermining their peaceful resistance and aspirations for a life without oppression, we will be abandoning our moral obligations.

When South Africa was under the apartheid regime, and I was told musicians were refusing to play there, I immediately agreed with that decision.

The complex situation in the Middle East doesn’t seem to me the same black-and-white image that South Africa's official, open racism policies showed me then.

I played in the United States during the [George W.] Bush administration but this didn’t mean I approved of the Iraq invasion. I wrote and recorded a song which opposed the politics that led to the Guantánamo prison being created – and I sang this in New York and Los Angeles. I want to learn more about what’s happening in Israel right now. I would never cancel a concert to say that I am basically against a whole country, unless I was, with all my heart, against it. But this is not the case case. I remember Israel was a place of hope. Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir died pro-Israel.

‘Boycott isn't a moral instrument, it's a political instrument’

Protesters in London in front of the Eventim Apolo, where Caetano and Gil played on July 1. Screenshot from YouTube.

Supporters of the BDS movement from Brazil and around the world accused the duo of being ‘money grabbing’, and have called for a boycott of the artists themselves — with protests in the tour's concerts in London and Paris — but Caetano’s views reflect how the BDS campaign is largely perceived in Brazil.

Its opponents argue that BDS is ‘selective indignation’ since other countries have also perpetuated wars of aggression against a specific population. Also, they argue that it is wrong to target a whole society for actions perpetrated by a government that doesn't necessarily represent it.

In a piece published in a prominent Brazilian pro-Israel blog, author João K. Miragaya replied to Roger Waters, saying that BDS supporters by their own standards should boycott countries like the United States and Russia because those countries also undertake illegal occupations and infringe international law. He said:

If legally there is no apartheid in Brazil (as there isn't in Israel), the numbers are alarming: according to Amnesty International, in 2012, 77% of homicide victims in Brazil were black or mixed race. According to the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, 71% of the black and mixed race population are illiterate and black and mixed race people are less than 10% of the university students in São Paulo state. I don't know if archbishop Desmond Tutu, who you mentioned compared the apartheid of South Africa to the Israeli occupation, has had access to this information, or if he ever visited a favela in Rio de Janeiro. What I know is that the oppression of poor and black people in Brazil is equal or even more violent than the Israeli occupation. Actually, the number of homicides per capita in Brazil is 10 times bigger than Israel and five times bigger than in Gaza and the West Bank.

[You] advocate the boycott of only Israel. You attribute responsibility not just to the government, but to the whole Jewish-Israeli population, exclusively, in a way that you do not do with any other civil population in the world in similar cases. Why?

Professor Pablo Ortellado, a Brazilian supporter of BDS, rebuffed those arguments in a social media post in which he explained:

The campaign for Gil and Caetano to cancel their show in Tel Aviv has been receiving a lot of criticism and I don't think it's consistent. The criticism says that it doesn't make sense to boycott Israel and not boycott a much more atrocious state power such as the United States. I think this criticism doesn't take into account the strategic significance of the boycott. The boycott isn't a moral instrument, it's a political instrument. Its objective is not to reach ‘purity’ in consumer or work relationships (in any case impossible in a capitalist society), but to pressure a political or economical actor to make a specific choice. In this way at the end of the 1950s, black people in the South of the United States boycotted bus companies to, through economic losses, stop the racial segregation policy in the seating arrangement; in this way consumers and artists throughout the whole world boycotted South Africa in the 1980s to compel the country through economic and moral pressure to end apartheid. Boycott is a coordinated political campaign that one takes part in, and not an attempt to reach purity in consumerism or work. Today, there doesn't exist, not that I know of, a well-structured campaign to boycott the United States to reach a specific goal, that's why the comparison doesn't make sense. However, for the first time, there is an international well-structured campaign for artists and consumers to boycott Israel so that this country ends its criminal and noxious occupation of the Palestinian territories. By not taking part in the campaign, Gil and Caetano are not doing something morally wrong — they are doing something politically wrong. They are trespassing against a coordinated action that is for the first time capable of disturbing the state of Israel economically and morally.

Kampala, Uganda. 27 April 2012 — Riot police walk past the entrance to the Gaddafi National Mosque in Old Kampala. Photo by Will Boase. Copyright Demotix

Earlier this month, 14 Ugandan youth were detained by the police after holding a press conference to demand free and fair elections. Political activist Andrew Karamagi used the occasion to call for electoral reforms at Centenary Park in the capital, Kampala. The police rounded them up accusing them of unlawful assembly under the Public Order Management Act.

The youth arrested are believed to be affiliated to the opposition Democratic Alliance and wanted to discuss the arrest of opposition politicians Kizza Besigye and former Prime Minister Amama Mbabazi.

Silver Kayondo's post on Solidarity Uganda blog offers an idea of the conditions that the arrested would find in Ugandan prisons. Kayondo wrote the piece after going to Central Police Station in Kampala in 2014 to visit his friend, who had been detained for having “shown his displeasure with Uganda's Attorney General's speech on how the Ugandan Government was complying with the rule of law.”

Back at the jail room, I was joined by two other friends from law school – Perez Onyait Odeke and Jonathan Mwesigwa Ssekiziyivu who were also there to visit Andrew. They had arrived earlier than me but they had been told that the police had instructions (from a higher authority) not to let anyone see Andrew before 1 p.m because “it was a special case.” Perez had been told to keep away from the Police Station lest he would be charged with being idle and disorderly! I found him standing at the City Square park – a public square that is cordoned off by police. We had walked back to the police station together. Jonathan was sitting on the short perimeter wall at the station. After exchanging a few jokes as we waited for the scheduled time, we set off for the police reception.

At the reception, one cannot fail to see the sorry state of the police station. The chairs are torn and tattered. The investigations rooms reeking with a pungent stench of human sweat and the humans there compete with reptiles (wall geckos and lizards) for space! Very little facelift has been done on the police station which we inherited from the British colonialists in 1962. The cement walls and floor are cracked. The store room where the suspects property (shoes, belts, caps, etc) are kept is not locked and it has no lockable drawers.

Returning to the present case, Raymond Qatahar and Samson Tusiime visited one of the arrested youths, Daniel Arinaitwe Turitwenka, who happens to be their friend. Although the youth were in a good shape when the duo visited, they discovered that there was a police officer who had spent two weeks in detention without any form of trial. This enraged them into launching a hashtag #ImpunityUg.

The Uganda police has been reduced into a small armed group that fights political opposition while part-timing at law keeping #ImpunityUG

Daniel Arinaitwe Turitwenka and his friends were later taken to court, charged with disobeying a lawful order and later released on cash bail. Masake Anthony of Chapter Four Uganda shared the charge sheet:

Spurred on by the discussion, Samson Tusiime and Raymond Qatahar have launched a project called the THEZEITGIEST that will discuss topical issues that affect Ugandans. The project will mainly be a face-to-face meetings, which will be recorded with the audio shared online:

Who knew pro-Russian militants were that into video games? Image by Ben Andreas Harding on Flickr. CC BY-NC-SA 2.0.

On July 22, the self-declared Luhansk People’s Republic in eastern Ukraine released what appeared to be a shocking video: a Stinger, an American-made Man-Portable Air-Defense System (MANPADS), was found in the Luhansk Airport. The video shows LNR militants inspecting what looks like a weapons cache, with close-up shots of the various arms and storage boxes with English-language inscriptions on them.

Russian state news agency RIA Novosti published an article on the same day declaring that a number of American weapons had been found at the airport (currently under insurgent control), quoting the Luhansk pro-Russian militants on their unexpected findings.

It would be a scandal of monumental proportions if not for the fact that, as revealed by keen-eyed Russian and Ukrainian bloggers and social media users, none of this was real.

Playing up the scandalous “discovery,” the self-declared republic’s chief investigator Leonid Tkachenko was so outraged he said LNR officials had immediately contacted representatives of the conflict watchdog group Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) to inform them of the findings.

As the video started to make the rounds online, many users quickly noticed that the “Stinger” launcher had a few very basic errors—including the English words printed onto its arms.

English test: Which is correct? RE USABLE or RE-USABLE? DATE LOUDED or DATE LOADED? TRACKING RAINER or TRAINER?

Usually, these discoveries would be the final chapter to this story: a ham-fisted attempt to show American “weapons” shipped to help Ukraine, with funny spelling errors. But as gaming blogger Anton Logvinov discovered, there was an extra layer of absurdity to the story, in which life imitated art.

And now the most important thing – do you know, where they got the “Rainer” from? From [the video game] Battlefield 3. That exact image from the game comes up first when you search for “Stinger” on Google image search, coming from IGN [a popular gaming website].
Apparently, DICE [the development agency of Battlefield 3] deliberately distorted the inscription, along with some other details, because they do not have the licenses to use these weapons [in the game].

Though it may not be your very first result on Google Image Search, you will see the aforementioned “RAINER” model of the Stinger come up among the top results.

The crux of the story, as Baudrillard would have been thrilled to conclude, was that the fake Stinger in the LNR video turned out to be modeled after an inaccurate virtual model of the gun. As you could imagine, the discovery led to a deluge of mirth and jokes among Russian and Ukrainian users, underscored, of course, by countless screenshots from video games.

And here is a fighter from a volunteer battalion shooting down an OSCE drone.

But perhaps Battlefield 3 was not the only artistic influence on the fake Stinger launcher. According to one eagle-eyed social media user, the serial number on the found “Stinger” is very similar to the model in another video game, Operation Flashpoint: Red River.

While the incident with the “shocking discovery” of “US weapons” in Luhansk airport is cause for laughter and humorous jibes, it also underscores a more sobering point about the information war: that those fighting for control of the information space are perfectly willing to bend and distort reality to create the appropriate framing for their claims and to sow doubts in the minds of media consumers and Internet users. All that remains for the public, then, is to keep being skeptical, to question what they see, and to think critically when faced with things like virtual guns in “real” videos, themselves a perfect metaphor for information manipulation.

Screencap of the documentary's title sequence. Image from Roman Borisovich on Twitter.

The new hard-hitting exposé From Russia With Cash shows how dirty money from Russia and elsewhere is being laundered through London's high-end real estate market. Since debuting July 8 on Britain's Channel 4, the documentary has already sparked an international campaign to reform U.K. property laws.

In the course of viewing five apartments, ranging in price from approximately $4.5 to $23.5 million, the couple meets with a series of real estate agents from top London firms, and secretly records the encounters.

At each showing, “Nastya” first pretends to fall in love with the space. Next, “Boris” pulls the estate agent aside to say that he would like to purchase the property, but needs the deal to proceed anonymously. Boris explains that he will be buying the property with money pilfered from the state budget and doesn't want anyone in Moscow connecting a hole in the budget with the purchase. “Every [Health Ministry] contract brings a little bit to my pocket,” Boris tells each estate agent, following the planned script. “Needless to say, the money for this flat comes out of the government budget. [Therefore] discretion is the absolute priority.”

In every instance filmed, the estate agents appear willing to continue with the sales, which could net them commissions ranging from $100,000 to $500,000. Some of the agents even recommend law firms that specialize in hiding a buyer's identity and coach “Boris” on how to avoid potential legal problems. In the U.K., estate agents are required by law to submit “suspicious activity reports” to the National Crime Agency if they have concerns that the money being used to purchase properties might have been obtained through criminal means.

British journalist Ben Judah, one of the people behind the film, spoke to RuNet Echo about the project. “I came up with the idea for [From Russia With Cash] on a London night bus with producer Tom Costello. We were sadly not surprised [to find not even one clean estate agent]: we'd been researching money laundering in London property for months. With at least £57 billion ($88.7 billion) worth of money laundering taking place in London and the U.K. a year—or 3.6% of GDP—dusty Victorian bricks have become the reserve currency of global corruption.”

Chido Dunn of the anticorruption group Global Witness explains the logic of money laundering through upmarket property. “Stolen billions don’t fit under mattresses—people only steal them if there is somewhere safe to put them and the U.K.’s property market is providing that safe haven,” says Dunn in the film. “London is, in effect, the money-laundering capital of the world.” Global Witness has previously called attention to this issue, such as in the report Blood Red Carpet. It highlights the case of a $5.5 million Surrey mansion believed to be owned by a former Kyrgyz President's son, who was convicted of corruption and the attempted murder of a U.K. citizen after fleeing his homeland in 2010.

As intended by its creators, From Russia With Cash has generated a lot of discussion about how London is enabling corruption around the world, and has also helped launch a campaign to reform U.K. property laws. After the initial airing of the documentary, the hashtag #FromRussiaWithCash became a trending topic on Twitter. An Early Day Motion (EDM) inspired by the film has been introduced in Britain's lower house of Parliament. An EDM is a formal motion that Parliament members can table to draw attention to a cause. 30 MPs have already signed on to EDM 275:

Early day motion 275: MONEY LAUNDERING THROUGH LONDON PROPERTY MARKET

That this House notes the recent screening of From Russia with Cash on Channel 4; expresses its concern that the proceeds of corruption are being laundered through the London property market via the use of anonymous offshore companies; and recommends that corporate transparency become a Land Registry requirement so that any foreign company intending to hold a property title in the UK is held to the same standards of transparency required of UK registered companies, so preventing London or other locations from becoming a safe haven for the corrupt.

Russians have also joined the campaign to clean up London's property market, and, by doing so, address corruption in Russia itself. Opposition politician Alexey Navalny published an online appeal calling on Russians to tweet at British Parliament members, urging them to support EDM 275. In the post, Navalny's anti-corruption team also highlights two anonymously owned, multi-million dollar London apartments, which they say belong to the sons of two powerful members of President Putin's inner circle, Vladimir Yakunin and Boris Rotenberg.

It will be very useful if you write several polite tweets to British Parliament members. Like these.

“We were delighted that Navalny joined the campaign,” Ben Judah told RuNet Echo. “One of the most effective tools a campaigner has at his disposal is shaming—and having an icon of the Russian opposition tweeting at British MPs that there are ‘Blood Mansions’ in their constituencies is a super-effective tool. The MPs tweeted at by him are unlikely to forget it. We think it works as every little nudge like that cements the idea in the MPs’ heads this is a live issue. It's a blunt way to illustrate to them money laundering is making many Russians angry at London's role in the corruption ‘looting-machine.'”

Judah said the makers of the documentary were keen to “keep up the activism” and push a set of targeted policy recommendations that they developed in collaboration with Global Witness and Transparency International. “Our one key objective is to end the ability to anonymously buy UK property: a device that allows budget-plunderers in Krasnoyarsk and Donetsk to turn their dirty black cash into pretty white assets in London stucco,” Judah said. He added that British Prime Minister David Cameron's aides have seen the policy proposal and are now considering it.

]]>http://globalvoicesonline.org/2015/07/21/laundering-russian-money-in-london-undercover-reporters-show-you-how-its-done/feed/5Global Voices Checkdesk Training Workshop to be held in Beirut on July 29http://globalvoicesonline.org/2015/07/20/global-voices-checkdesk-training-workshop-to-be-held-in-beirut-on-july-29/
http://globalvoicesonline.org/2015/07/20/global-voices-checkdesk-training-workshop-to-be-held-in-beirut-on-july-29/#commentsMon, 20 Jul 2015 19:38:33 +0000http://globalvoicesonline.org/?p=532146Investigative journalists and people interested in social media in Lebanon are in for a treat at the end of this month.

Global Voices Online and Meedan are teaming up to present a workshop on ‘Fact-checking for the Web’ at AltCity, Hamra, Beirut, on July 29.

The hands-on training will take place from 2pm to 6pm and covers topics related to the emergence and development of citizen journalism in the MENA region, reporting for the Web and online media verification.

Launched in March 2015, Global Voices Checkdesk is powered by the globally minded team at Meedan; working from San Francisco, Cairo, Vancouver, London and Beirut. It is a multi-year project combining research and open curriculum development with our University partner Birmingham City University, open curriculum development and training with a set of community media initiatives, and content creation through a growing network of regional media partners.

GV Checkdesk is run by Global Voices Lebanese author Joey Ayoub and Global Voices Bahrain author Faten Bushehri, who, along with a team of volunteers, have been tracking citizen media reports on breaking news across the Middle East and North Africa region. The goal is to collect witness accounts and other reports under one platform, and then verify the news, before it is used as part of our coverage at Global Voices Online. To join our GV Checkdesk team, please sign up here.

To find out how Checkdesk works, sign up here for the workshop. Hurry up as seating is limited.

The Telegram messaging app has been blocked in China amid accusations of allegedly aiding Chinese human-rights lawyers in their everyday work and organizing. The block follows a massive cyber attack against the company’s Asia-Pacific servers earlier this month.

Hong Kong Free Press first reported the block on July 13. According to blockedinchina.net, access to Telegram’s web-version has been blocked from servers located in Beijing, Shenzhen, Inner Mongolia, Heilongjiang and Yunnan provinces in China.

Screenshot from blockedinchina.net from July 20, showing the Telegram web interface block in China.

On July 12, Chinese state-run newspaper People's Daily published an article accusing Telegram of aiding human-rights lawyers and advocates, who allegedly used the app and its “Secret Chat” mode (which allows messages to self-destruct after a period of time) to engage in “attacks on the [Communist] Party and government.” These accusations are the latest in a series of attacks on human rights advocates in China, with 23 individuals already arrested, and over a 100 others facing pressure from the state. Some human rights lawyers, like Pu Zhiqiang, have also faced persecution for their messages on Chinese microblogging website Weibo.

Telegram, run by a Berlin-based non-profit, was founded by Russian Internet entrepreneur Pavel Durov, who is also the founder of Russia's biggest social network, VK (often dubbed “Russia's Facebook”). After facing pressure from the Kremlin to share personal data about the VK community organizers of Euromaidan groups and to shut down a Russian anti-corruption group, among other things, Durov sold his share of VK, was forced out of a leading role in the company, and left Russia in search of new beginnings.

On July 10, Telegram reported a massive DDoS (distributed denial of service) attack on its Asia-Pacific servers. Founder Pavel Durov wrote about the cyber attack on Twitter.

In a blog post on its official site, Telegram speculated the attack could have been initiated by its Korean competitors, Kakao Talk and Line, whose users moved to Telegram en masse in 2014 because of censorship.

By now we know that the attack is being coordinated from East Asia.

We've noticed a three-fold increase in signups from South Korea in the last two weeks. The last time we were hit by a massive DDoS was in late September, 2014, in the wake of the South Korean privacy scandal when signups from that country spiked as well.

We've also heard that some companies are unhappy with our new platform that allows artists to create free custom stickers for the users. Two weeks after its launch we were hit by a lesser DDoS, also aimed specifically at the Asia Pacific cluster.

While there has been online speculation that the Chinese government could also be responsible for the DDoS attack, Telegram has not offered any official versions about the source of the attack, but did say it came from South-East Asia.

@xoclate@telegram We're on it 24 hours a day. Managed to be online for 95% of users. The attack is coming and is coordinated from SE Asia.

When asked about reports of the China block, Durov told TechCrunch that he didn't think Telegram was “completely blocked in China,” but said the traffic from the region had decreased. “[But] if we do get completely blocked in China, we’re not going to play cat and mouse with their government at this stage. Let them block,” Durov reportedly said.

Durov's native Russia has also been considering a crack-down of sorts on messenger apps like Telegram. In July, Ivan Tavrin, the president of MegaFon, Russia’s third largest telecom operator, asked the Russian government to consider introducing new regulations for the messaging services WhatsApp, Viber, and Skype. Apart from the apps being in competition with traditional SMS services offered by telecom providers, Tavrin took issue with the security of the messengers, claiming they put dangerous power in the hands of terrorists and spammers.

Since they were first arrested and jailed on April 25, 2014, Ethiopia's Zone9 bloggers have seen many twists and turns in their case. All told, they have appeared before the court 30 times in 15 months, and been adjourned each time. But with the release of five of the detainees last week, the case now has reached at a critical juncture.

Five Ethiopian writers (four in prison and one in absentia) are still on trial for terror-related crimes that the Ethiopian government claims were committed beginning in May 2012. On July 20, the Ethiopian High Court is expected to issue a verdict on the case.

Endalk Chala, a founding member of the Zone9 blogging collective and Global Voices contributor, answers six key questions on the minds of their supporters around the world.

What exactly have the writers been charged with?

Prosecutors say that the writers have engaged themselves in undercover enterprise with the intent to overthrow, modify or suspend the Ethiopian Federal State Constitution by violence, threats or conspiracy. Prosecutors have since further accused the writers of encrypting their communications and disseminating seditious writings with the intention of causing public strife or to overthrow, modify or suspend the Ethiopian Federal Constitutional State by violence, threats, or conspiracy. While the first charge asserts that the writers violated the country’s contentious anti-terrorism law, the latter is a violation of criminal code of the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia. Both charges are severe in terms penalties, though media coverage of the case has primarily focused on the terrorism charge.

Weren’t the writers released last week?

There are ten individuals charged, out of which only five individuals are released suddenly last week. The manner in which the writers were released is so mysterious that even their defense attorney heard the news of the release of his clients via radio. Critics say that the government is trying to save face by releasing a few individuals ahead of President Obama’s imminent visit to Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.

What exactly is a “bench” trial?

In Ethiopia’s legal system there is only a ‘bench’ trial, in which a judge or panel of judges, not a jury, determines if someone is guilty or innocent. Accordingly, the cases of Zone9 Bloggers have been overseen by a middle judge called Shelemew Bekele who chairs the panel of three judges. However, the Zone9 bloggers have repeatedly pointed out that the judge presiding over the case has changed at least four times since proceedings against them first began. After the bloggers protested his partiality to the prosecutors, Judge Shelemew promised to walk out from the case but he still is presiding the case.

What will be the fate of the bloggers?

Since five of the writers who are accused of similar of crimes were released, there is a hope that the Ethiopian court will exonerate the remaining five bloggers. In brief statements, the released writers said they are perplexed why their colleagues are left in prison but they are optimistic that their friends will soon join them in the free world.

What if the bloggers are found guilty?

For terrorism and incitement offenses, the mandatory sentence in Ethiopia is a minimum of eight years in prison. However, in the absence of any evidence to support the allegation, I hope the court will recognize that the bloggers are being tried solely for their work in relation with their human rights activism, including their articles critical of Ethiopian government policies, and will exonerate them.

What does this tell us about Ethiopia’s judicial system?

The case of Zone9Bloggers is unfortunately no anomaly in Ethiopia’s highly compromised judiciary system. It is the tip of an iceberg in which political corruption thrives and the judicial system is run by an elite and powerful minority.

Endalk Chala is a founding member of the Zone9 blogging collective who is currently pursuing at PhD at the University of Oregon in the US.

Chinese-Trinidadian Lily Kwok's photo, which she posted publicly on Facebook, in an effort to counteract racial stereotyping.

The online retaliation by Trinidad and Tobago citizens of Chinese descent over the latest surge of racial stereotyping against them is attracting a lot of attention. The anti-Chinese sentiments were ignited by a video of a couple — allegedly at a local Chinese restaurant — skinning a dog. It went viral on social media and was exacerbated by inflammatory comments by the country's health minister.

One “Chinee girl” (as they are sometimes referred to in Trinidad), Lily Kwok, couldn't take it anymore and posted a photo of herself on Facebook holding a placard that said, “I will not ‘Go back to China’. I am Trinidadian.” She was immediately supported by a slew of like-minded citizens, some of Chinese descent, some not.

Her spunk and outspokenness so affected blogger Rhoda Bharath that she interviewed Kwok about the experience of living in her Chinese skin in Trinidad and Tobago. Bharath introduced the post by summarising that Kwok “has Chinese parents, a lovely mind and a bruised spirit. She feels under represented, unempowered and overwhelmed”. As it turned out, the dog-skinning incident was not the first one that precipitated online anti-Chinese sentiment. Kwok recalled:

This first began with the incident of the 4 Chinese nationals who were involved in the stealing of the turtle eggs in June, 2015. I was absolutely flabbergasted […] As someone who loves animals and enjoys turtle-watching, I was very upset at the situation. But you know what else also upset me? The racialized comments that followed after on social media. There is no doubt in my mind that what those men did was criminal and they should be dealt with by the law accordingly. However, instead of purely focusing on the criminality of the action […] many comments diverged into racial stereotyping; assumptions that ‘Chinee people does eat anything’. Moreover, some comments went so far as to request that ‘all dem Chinee need to be sent back.’ I found this amusing considering that when pictures of people standing on leatherback turtles surface on social media, people rarely (if ever) involve ‘race’ in admonishing the acts.

Of the dog-skinning incident, she said:

No one denies that a dog is being skinned in the video. That is indeed a fact. And yes, Chinese nationals were once again involved in such an act. That is indeed a fact. But you know what are not facts? That the preparation of the dog to be eaten is any way connected to a Chinese restaurant, that dog meat is being used as a substitute for other meat in Chinese restaurants, and that ALL Chinese people and people of Chinese ancestry eat dog. Yet, even though these are not hard, substantiated facts, many people have made extremely racist and xenophobic comments surrounding them […]

Instead of focusing on the real issue at hand, which is having a meaningful discussion on animal rights and protection in Trinidad and Tobago, we have devolved into using the situation as a platform to unearth deep-seated racism towards Chinese people and people of Chinese ancestry.

Noting that complacency about these kinds of issues is dangerous, Kwok said that she deals with this kind of ethnic stereotyping “through education”:

Sometimes you have to remind someone of your own humanity and individuality. […] To cultivate unity, harmony and love within our society we must first begin to show love ourselves.

Three years ago, in time for Trinidad and Tobago's 50th anniversary of independence from Great Britain, Joshua Lue Chee Kong posted a photography project online that demonstrated just how deep-seated Trinidad and Tobago's racial perceptions were. He streamed the project into four “series” — Brown, White, Yellow and Black — and posed, as a Chinese person, in various stereotypical scenarios that made it evident, without saying a word, just how ridiculous these impressions are. The Brown Series was a play on the history of Indian indentured labourers who arrived in Trinidad and Tobago to work in the sugar cane fields post-Emancipation:

Photo by Keevan Chang On. Used with permission

The White Series took on the idea of light-skinned Trinidadians being entitled and carefree:

Photo by Keevan Chang On. Used with permission

The Yellow Series was almost prophetic, as it featured several images of Lue Chee Kong in a kitchen with packs of “dog meat”:

Photo by Keevan Chang On. Used with permission

Finally, the Black Series featured Lue Chee Kong at an intersection, poised to clean car windshields:

Photo by Keevan Chang On. Used with permission

It is astounding that these two posts are years apart; Lily Kwok could have been commenting on Joshua Lue Chee Kong's images when she said:

You, as a person in a ‘callaloo country […] have no right to humiliate or dehumanize another human being on the basis of their ‘status’ within the country. This ‘us’ versus ‘them’ mentality, perpetuated since the dawn of colonialism, is a little too old for 2015.